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Much Rides on LTE-U/Wi-Fi Interoperability Tests

April 12, 2016

By Ernest Worthman

Courtesy of ruralconnect.coop

The Wi-Fi Alliance is steadily making progress on the interoperability tests with LTE-U. Is there the possibility that they are dragging their feet a bit? Perhaps, since LTE-U has the potential to strip some revenue from the Wi-Fi camp. But the interference issue that LTE-U present are real.

Many people, companies, organizations, and others have a lot invested in Wi-Fi. Pressure from Ericsson, Qualcomm, and others in the LTE-U camp should not rush testing or test timelines – even if it puts a kink in the much touted quick time to market that LTE-U proponents have been all about. There is a lot at stake on both sides of the field so it isn’t a good idea to get flawed, or incomplete data and find out later that incompatibilities still exist.

A statement from the Wi-Fi Alliance made note that it is committed to maintaining the inclusive and collaborative process for developing a test plan that will ensure fair coexistence among LTE and Wi-Fi devices. Its present goal is to deliver a coexistence test plan by summer 2016. Has anything in this industry ever come out when it is scheduled? Talk to the IEEE standards bodies about that! In this case there are other stakeholders involved and the Alliance, try as hard as it may, cannot force them to produce their deliverables on time. After all, the stakeholders may have bugs to iron out as well.

This is one of those issues that should be toughly investigated so that the final products work, and without compromise.